This really long chapter about Mary Anne and Mark Fossie makes a really good point. I don't know how realistic this is though.. Can a soldier really bring his girlfriend to war with him? The whole story was pretty elaborate not to be true, but I'm reluctant to believe it could happen. However, I understand what the story really was about.. and that's what O'Brien really wants anyways.
After I read, I was reminded of this movie I watched called Brothers, it's rather recent, so you all probably know what I'm talking about, maybe. Here's the trailer, watch if you want to. I'm not really referring to the whole love drama of it.
Well, the part in the trailer where he is like "You know what I did for you?!?" (He is crazy mad) Well, he did something crazy so that he could get back to her, but he can't talk about it with anyone, because no one understands. He is really stressed out and gets really angry. At one point, he asks to go back to Afghanistan, because "No one can understand here".
That's exactly what Rat Kiley explains: "...Mary Anne made you think about those girls back home, how pure and innocent they all are, how they'll never understand any of this, not in a billion years. It's like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like" (page 108).
(I never really thought about describing chocolate to someone who has never tried it.. although, I've never met anyone who hasn't tried chocolate either)
Soldiers have seen things indescribable to the typical American. Even though there is no point to a good war story, I think O'Brien shared this one with us because he wants us to know that even though this entire book will talk about the war (probably) we won't understand it completely, unless we've experienced ourselves. It is kinda of like a foreshadowing. O'Brien is warning us of what is ahead by telling us that if we aren't a soldier or a Mary Anne, then forget now about wanting to feel some sort of connection to this novel.
Wow, Mary! At the beginning I was thinking, she really gets this book and then towards the end you just completely gave up, "you won't understand it even if you try." Lol I think you are very right because we won't ever completely understand it because we've never felt the emotions, but in a way, we're feeling him feel the emotions. So it's a second-hand understanding I guess. Oh, side note: did Mary Anne give you nightmares? She definitely creeped me out...
ReplyDeleteThat no-one-understands-anything idea seems to crop up a lot in the novel. It shows up when Tim finally isn't part of the army anymore, so he's not "us" anymore, and it's there when Norman Bowker almost spills his soul to the guy at the drive-in.
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